by W. C. Peever
“Cutting it a bit close,” said Bailey.
“Well, let’s hurry then,” said Charlie, looking again at his ring.
“Um, there aren’t giant rats in this tunnel, are there?” said Bailey apprehensively.
Marley chuckled. “No need to worry about them in here. They only live in the catacombs beneath the castle.”
“When was this tunnel made?” Bailey asked.
“The Vanari originally created these tunnels in secret during their brief stay with the Order. Through the preceding years hundreds of these tunnels were made, most of which have collapsed or been forgotten. No one quite knows why they were created; Grayson always thought that they created them to hide their dark weapons. After all this is where he found the crystal staff that killed him. I found this one when I was a student here, and in my youth, I used to escape the castle at night.”
“I see light,” said Mick. “I think we made it!” Sure enough, they emerged from the stone tunnel into brilliant afternoon light.
“Keep your voices down ‘til we make it to the ruins.”
“What’s wrong, Marley?” Bailey asked. “You sound worried.”
“I lost you three once before, and I won’t let it happen again. Not while I am alive.” Bailey smiled and gave him an awkward hug. After another minute, they arrived at the ruins and Marley began to clear brush away from a hidden entrance. “In you go,” he commanded and hurried the three into the safety of more stone tunnels.
“Don’t move,” said a woman’s trembling voice from the shadows. “Password?”
“Molly, it’s me, Marley. The password is Charlie, and I’ve more than you can imagine here.”
Ms. Welling appeared from the shadows, cane in hand. She looked much older, and worn.
“Marley, is it really you? We thought the very worst, that you had been captured or…” She swallowed.
“I was captured, and barely escaped with my life, Molly.”
“You escaped? Are you sure you weren’t followed?” She eyed a nearby warning bell.
“Molly, it’s okay. No one followed me. I was rescued.”
“Rescued? Marley, we sent no one to retrieve you. It was too risky. Who is that with you?”
“There’s not much time, Molly: we need to take Charlie here to his father.”
“Charlie!” Molly shouted, pushing Marley out of the way and dropping to her knees to gather Marley’s rescuers in her arms. “My babies! Oh, my babies!” She was crying. “How is it that you’ve come back? I thought…”
“They came to us from another dimension, Molly. Their world is in crisis. We need to get them to Daniel as quickly as possible. They do not have much time left on the clock.”
Ms. Welling stood up, brushing away both tears and dust from her tattered robes. “Quickly, then. Daniel is in the circle room.” Together they hurried down a damp, mossy corridor. Charlie could hardly believe that he was about to meet his father. There were so many things that he wanted to say to him, to ask him. But, when it really came down to it, would he have the time or nerve?
“Your father is in that room, Charlie. Why don’t you two come with me,” said Ms. Welling to Mick and Bailey. “I believe that I can scrounge up some tea and cookies for the two of you. You have no idea what warmth seeing you brings to my heart.” She pushed Charlie towards the door and bustled the other two into an adjoining room. Marley knocked on the door for Charlie.
“Enter,” said Joelle, from within the room. “Marley, you…” She stopped talking as Charlie entered. “It can’t be. It’s impossible.”
“It’s him, Joelle, from a different dimension.”
“My son!” Daniel got up from the wooden bench he had been sitting on. He stood about six feet, a handsome man, and anyone could see that Charlie had inherited many of his father’s features. “You are my son, in this or any dimension.” Daniel walked over and embraced his son close to his chest. At that moment, all of the malice, hate, and distrust Charlie had harbored all these years for his father melted away, and he felt a sense of fulfillment that he had never experienced before.
“Charlie, let me look at you. Oh, my boy.” Daniel embraced his son again, harder than before, then ruffled his hair and kissed him on the forehead. “But why have you come, Charlie? Marley must have told you that Vali has already killed you here.”
“I need the ring, Merlin’s ring,” Charlie said, choking out the words.
“But Charlie, this ring…” He fiddled with the golden token on his fingers. “This ring is very, very dangerous. If Vali got hold of you and you had this ring….”
“Then he’ll just have to kill me. I will not help Vali, even if he kills me. I will fight it, but I need your ring. I need to destroy the crystals.”
“Maybe you could do what I couldn’t.” Daniel said thoughtfully to his son. “I tried once, Charlie. I failed, and my failure cost me you and your mother. I never wanted to leave you. I thought that if I was gone, that Vali would have had no need to take you or your mother, unless, of course you inherited my abilities. I kept this secret from your mother. I knew that when you turned twelve, Joelle or Grayson would pick you up, train and protect you.” He began to take off his ring, when a clamor from outside grabbed his attention.
“He’s here! Vali is here!” yelled a man from the halls. Fire balls and bolts of green light echoed down the hallway.
“They’ve found us,” said Joelle as she turned herself into a tiger. “I will get the other travelers. You two protect Charlie.”
“How much time do you have left, Charlie?” asked his father.
“Minutes.” Charlie checked his ring. “One, maybe two.”
“Marley, hold them off. All we need is two minutes.”
Marley nodded and headed out the door to join the battle.
“Son, listen to me.” Daniel pressed the ring into Charlie’s hand. “In your world, I probably did the same thing I did in this world. I threw myself in between dimensions. I did it by setting the dial between the two lines, and then thought of nothing. I didn’t set a return time. I was stuck in suspended animation, and I could not get back.”
“Then how did you get back?” asked Charlie.
“Grayson found me and used the crystal staff in his office to bring me back, when he failed to keep you from Vali. He hoped that I would be able to save you. I could not, and many people died because of it.”
“There must be another way to get you back, other than using the crystal staff. Grayson died using it.” Charlie’s ring began to turn wildly on his finger.
“It’s time, son,” his father said grimly. Joelle bounded in with Mick and Bailey on her back. They dismounted and ran to Charlie’s side just as the door was shattered.
“Well, well, well. A family reunion?” snarled Vali. “Back from the dead, I see. No matter, I can dispatch you.”
“Not this time, Vali,” cried Marley. With a common roar Ms. Welling, Joelle, Marley and Daniel all attacked at the same time, each using their own unique ability. “Keep alive until they Jump!” roared Marley.
“Dad, no!” Charlie screamed, but the words were lost in the shower of purple sparks that flew around the three travelers, and returned them back to their own world.
Chapter Fifteen
The Choices We Make
Tears were still steaming from Charlie’s eyes when they rematerialized back in their home world. To have his father so close, then torn away from him before he could really talk with him, was too much. The whole thing was too much. How could he expect to function constantly, hunted and manipulated? How had his father and Merlin managed it? The warmth of Bailey’s hand brought him back to the present. The room that they were in was darker than any night he could remember. The air was moist and earthy.
“We must still be in the ruins. Mick, can you charge your staff enough to shine some light?” asked Charlie.
“I’ll give it a go,” he said. Slowly their faces became illuminated in an eerie green glow. “Hey what do you kno
w, it works,” Mick gloated.
“Okay, where exactly are we and how do we find our way out of here?” Charlie vented. “You two need to find Joelle and the Headmaster and I’ll head to the dorms to look for the sword.”
“Do you think that we should be separated like that, mate?”
Charlie slipped in the thick slime on the floor of the tunnel. Cursing, he regained his footing and pressed on. “No. I don’t think we have a lot of time here. We need the back up from the Grayson and Joelle once we have the sword. I am certain now that it was stolen by a student, and I have a good idea who!”
“I agree,” Bailey said in a calm, measured voice. “But, if anything happened to you…” her voice trailed off.
Charlie nodded and moments later found the entrance to the tunnel, or at least the mound of dirt where the door should have been.
“Start digging?” Charlie asked. He took his sword and shoved it into the impacted mud, and began to pull apart the tree roots and clear away the dirt. Mick and Bailey joined in using a sharp rock and Mick’s staff. It took them twenty minutes, a torn cloak and three splintered fingernails to clear away the rubble, but finally they were standing on the other side of the entrance.
“I can see how Grayson could have missed this place. It looks like any other hill around here.” Charlie murmured “It must have gone undisturbed since the time of Merlin.”
“So you think this is the place in the forest that the poem talked about?” asked Bailey.
“Yes. There was a carving in the table where Joelle and my father were talking. It looked like an ornate sword with a jewel at the center of the hilt. I’ll wager that was Excalibur, and it’s hidden somewhere in the dorms. How else would it be that Grayson and the wards haven’t sensed it leaving the castle?” Charlie smiled.
“So what then? You put the sword on some table and the stone magically lifts out of it?” asked Mick.
“No clue.” Charlie frowned. “We’ll have to cross those bridges when we get to them. First we need to get the sword, Joelle and Grayson to this spot. They’ll be able to translate any runes that might be present so that we don’t do anything stupid.” The others nodded and sprinted off.
By the time Charlie made it to the dormitories, he was exhausted. The room was empty. Perfect, he thought. Once he regained his breath, he ran to Lance’s bed and began rummaging through his trunk and dresser drawers.
Nothing! He searched Lance’s best friend’s area, nothing again. With over three hundred boys living in the dormitory Charlie knew that he was going to have to move fast. Who is next? He thought, Excalibur had to be in one of Lance’s goons’ chests.
With each empty trunk and drawer his heart sank lower and soon he began to lose all hope of finding the sword. He felt like a giant sandbag had been placed over his chest, squeezing the breath out of his lungs. Then he had an idea, Samuel. He ran across the dormitory, located Samuel’s area, and frantically tossed his empty trunk and drawers. Giving up, he sat on a bed to think. The moment he did his fingers hit something smooth, sharp and metallic. He frantically pulled back the bed clothes to find a silver sword, about four feet long, inlaid with beautiful, ornate designs and glyphs of glittering gold. At the heart of the hilt was a prune sized, blue gem.
“Excalibur,” Charlie whispered. He carefully extracted Excalibur, replacing it with his old sword, and slid Merlin’s blade into his belt.
As he did a voice spoke from behind him. “You see my love he’s a thief, only interested in the prize.” Charlie jumped. The voice came from nowhere. “Look at him. Pathetic! Let him see us before he has a stroke?”
From out of thin air, in a cackle of laughter materialized Tillie and Samuel. “Tillie?” Charlie asked in shock. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
“She is watching you steal what I rightly found. I was going to give it to her so that she could claim the prize from the Oracle. But first, I wanted to show her that the friends she thought she had were little more than thieves, who obviously had no intention of ever cutting her in.”
“Tillie, that’s not true!” Charlie said with a terrible ache in his heart. “You are my friend, but I don’t think you know who your boyfriend here is.” Tillie seemed to be blankly watching Charlie talk. She was not moving at all. “What have you done to her?” cried Charlie.
“I have her…shall we say, ‘under control’. At first I believed that her love for me would be enough to secure her help. She’s smart, you know, maybe smarter than you or that bimbo of yours, Bailey. Tillie proved more complex than I thought—so lonely, so desperate for attention—and I was under the false impression that I fulfilled these needs. For the first time in her life. she had someone who wanted to hear what she thought, who would caress her cheek, and hug her when she was sad. I thought I had her wrapped around my finger. “I knew that my Lord would reward me if I delivered an Invisible to him, but when I saw you look at her, and she at you, well, I had a new idea. I could use Matilda to capture you,” Samuel said, rubbing his hands together and grinning greedily. “Unfortunately, I underestimated how much pull you would have on her, and I began to lose my control on Tillie. My constant attention was just not enough, so I began to control her mind. I may fool my teachers with my admittedly mediocre Elementalist skills, but that’s only because I spend my time training my mind for the day that my Lord calls me to service. You see, I am actually an excellent Influencearian. Once I placed Tillie under my control, she told me everything, your entire plan. That the stone in the hilt of the sword was valuable and that you, Grayson and that hairball Joelle wanted it.” He rubbed his hands again. “Everything was going to plan until she had that fight with your little girlfriend. For awhile my powers slipped in my rage, and Tillie tried to reach out to you. Luckily you were not smart enough to get that she was pleading for your help. But that didn’t stop me. I quickly regained control and had her follow you around. Easy, since it was what she so desperately wanted to do anyway. That is how I discovered that the crystal at the hilt of the sword was actually Merlin’s map, and the ring was the device I needed to make it work.” He pointed to the ring on Charlie’s finger.
“Actually it was most kind of you to bring all of the pieces to me, and it isn’t even my birthday!” Samuel’s teeth bared in an evil sneer.
“There’s no bloody way I am giving you this ring!” Charlie yelled.
” Bloody? You’ve been spending too much time with that Australian. Well, no matter, I didn’t expect you think you to just hand it over. Samuel’s eyes flashed back and Charlie raised Excalibur to a fighting stance.
Samuel looked both ways, and seeing no one else chuckled. “When it comes to brawn, you may have me beat. I am not a physical person. Why should I be? I have no need to fight when I can enter the mind of my opponent and make him kill himself.”
Samuel touched his fingers to a thin gold ring he wore around his head, which had been hidden by his long black hair. “Dance,” he said, and Charlie’s feet began to move. “Go ahead, Jumper boy, stop dancing. I have only affected a tiny part of your mind, so you should be able to stop.”
“Tillie! Please, can’t you see what’s happening?” Charlie begged, but Tillie remained impassive.
“Help me! Oh please, little girl help me!” Samuel mocked. Charlie’s anger rose. He might be helpless for the moment, but he was determined to fight at the first opportunity.
“You’re weak, Jumper boy! To think that the Order places such a value on you. Ha!”
“You’re still not getting the ring,” Charlie shot back while doing an Irish jig.
“Watch me,” Samuel said and Charlie immediately collapsed to the floor, barely avoiding getting pieced by Excalibur as it clattered to the floor beneath him. “I believe it’s time to show you what real power is.” Samuel again touched his fingers to the thin band of metal around his head and Charlie picked up Excalibur in one hand and promptly ran it through the other. The pain was excruciating, but he was unable to scream.
; “Stabbing yourself instead of me, are you? Do you hate yourself so much for treating Tillie so poorly when she needed you the most? You’re a lot more like your father than you imagined, aren’t you? Abandoning those people who love you most” said Samuel, laughing. “What’s worse, the pain, or the frustration of not being able to scream? All that pain and no way to release it.” He sneered at Charlie. “I think I’ve proven enough. You are pathetically weak, and never deserved the abilities you inherited. Gods, you make me sick.” Samuel looked down at his victim and pronounced, “Don’t worry; it will all be over soon.”
Charlie felt Excalibur rise in his hand off the ground. He was going to die, there was no stopping it. He looked up to Tillie, deciding that, at least, he would see something beautiful before he died. She wasn’t there.
Charlie looked at his body, now standing, the point of Excalibur pushed up sharply against his belly. “Well, Charlie, I guess all that there is left is for you to do is fall on your own sword. Shame I forgot popcorn. Goodbye.”
There was a sickening crunch. Charlie glanced down, expecting to see the sword hilt protruding from his abdomen, but instead found himself once again in control of his body. Samuel was staring at him, wide-eyed and shocked. Then the Influencearian dropped to the floor. Behind him stood Tillie, holding a cricket bat, tears streaming down her face.
“I… I…” she stammered.
Charlie tore off a piece of his robe and wrapped it tightly around his wounded hand, attempting to stop the bleeding. “What did you do, Tillie?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, Charlie. He seemed so nice,” she said mistily.
Charlie walked over and collected the quaking girl in his arms. “You saved my life, Tillie. How did you break his control? It was so strong.”
“I saw everything, Charlie. I just couldn’t feel anything until he turned his full attention to you. When you stabbed yourself in the hand, I felt your pain and frustration and it helped me become myself again. I realized what he was going to do. I knew that I had to stop him.” Tears welled again in her eyes. “I feel so stupid, Charlie.”